Policing Life and Death by Marisol LeBrón - Hardcover

About the Book

In her exciting new book, Marisol LeBrón traces the rise of punitive governance in Puerto Rico over the course of the twentieth century and up to the present. Punitive governance emerged as a way for the Puerto Rican state to manage the deep and ongoing crises stemming from the archipelago’s incorporation into the United States as a colonial territory. A structuring component of everyday life for many Puerto Ricans, police power has reinforced social inequality and worsened conditions of vulnerability in marginalized communities.

This book provides powerful examples of how Puerto Ricans negotiate and resist their subjection to increased levels of segregation, criminalization, discrimination, and harm. Policing Life and Death shows how Puerto Ricans are actively rejecting punitive solutions and working toward alternative understandings of safety and a more just future.

Table of Contents

List of Tables
Acknowledgments

Introduction: They Don’t Care If We Die
1 • A War against the Victims
2 • Colonial Projects
3 • Underground
4 • The Continued Promise of Punishment
5 • Policing Solidarity
6 • #ImperfectVictims
7 • Security from Below
Postscript: Broken Windows and Future Horizons
after the Storm

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"Lebron’s book is well-written and [we] recommend it, especially for scholars or policymakers interested in an interdisciplinary assessment of the implementation of repressive policies against crime."
— Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

"For both local and foreign readers, the book present an ideal model of an exhaustive case study, embodied though detailed descriptions that help us understand how deadly policies manifest themselves in a colonial context. . . . Lebrón’s book is ideal for anyone interested in the effects of punitive governance in colonial contexts."
— Latino Studies

"LeBrón effectively expose[s] . . . the cyclical destruction of colonial capitalism in the neoliberal period. In the Puerto Rican case, capital flight and the erosion of social programs and economic opportunities precipitated a series of crises—unemployment, crime, debt, dilapidated infrastructure—and those crises were used to justify further austerity and privatization, which exacerbated existing crises, spawned new ones, and continued the cycle. LeBrón’s notion of punitive governance fits neatly within this narrative."
— New Labor Forum

"Marisol LeBrón brilliantly traces the origins and evolution of punitive governance in Puerto Rico. . . . [and her book] is a major contribution to American studies, history, urban studies, geography, and other fields."
— AAG Review of Books

"LeBrón masterfully blurs latinx, black, carceral, feminist, queer, and critical ethnic studies. . . . Policing Life and Death will be the standard for contemporary studies of policing in Puerto Rico going forward."
— H-Net

"The book’s framing of the issues, its solid research methodology, and diversity of approaches to the analysis of crime, policy responses, and resistances, makes for a great critique of the legitimacy and role of the state in contemporary social relations."
— Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association

"Presents a timely and hopeful book to the canon of Puerto Rico, policing, and colonialism."
— Black Perspectives

"In this extraordinary book, Marisol LeBrón does a brilliant job of helping us see the everyday activism and cultural inventiveness of Puerto Ricans figuring out how to respond to state repression and colonial capitalism. It’s a genuinely thrilling read."—Laura Briggs, author of How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump

"Policing Life and Death deftly illuminates the long historical presence of 'punitive governance' in Puerto Rico, demonstrating the depth to which gendered, racist state violence defines the US colonial/neocolonial relationship with the island and its people. This indispensable study not only focuses on the normalized, cross-generational violence generated by the policing and criminological regimes, but also pays rigorous attention to the ways Puerto Rican activists, artists, community leaders, and others respond to—and potentially transform—this punitive condition."—Dylan Rodríguez, author of Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the US Prison Regime

"LeBrón's rigorously researched, trenchant examination of how everyday life is sectioned, monitored, and controlled is an essential read for understanding modern-day Puerto Rico and all communities and societies negotiating and defending themselves from the layered execution of power."—Zaire Dinzey-Flores, author of Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City

Policing Life and Death

About the Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

Reviews

Awards